2014 Hunting Pictures

[Brad]

I assumed you were on a solo hunt when you didn't appear in the photo. You did very well with that bad boy.

Actually I have a few "hero shots" but prefer not to post them. A self timer is a wonderful invention :grin:

The bull was around 60-70 yards away with his butt towards me. I waited for him to turn and shot him in the ribs. The bullet angled forward and was under the offside scapula. It penetrated something like 32" of elk, and made a mess of his boiler room. He went 50 yards and piled up with a good blood trail, and was stone dead when I got to him. This is an older bull with teeth worn fairly flat. Likely 7.5 years old +.

I'm going to play with some 160 NAB's next if the rifle stays a 7-08, though I may just rebarrel to 308.

150 NBT:

 

[Brad]

Goose Hunter, way to go on your first!

 

[SJB358]

Nice Brad. What was the specs on your 7-08 load for the 150 BT? My son uses the 150 BT as his practice load in his 7x57 and 150 PT's as his hunting load. While loosing a core is never optimum, it went through a whole lotta elk before it quit.

 

[SJB358]

Goosehunter/Brad, congrats on the elk! Man, I love this time of the year when the elk start falling!

That little Kimber looks to be right at home on that sorta hunt Brad. Very nice.

 

[DrMike]

Goosehunter,

Congratulations on a fine elk. You worked hard and the reward is sweet. Actually, any elk can be a trophy if we consider the hunt, the area we hunted and the wariness of the animal pursued.

 

[Brad]

Nice Brad. What was the specs on your 7-08 load for the 150 BT? My son uses the 150 BT as his practice load in his 7x57 and 150 PT's as his hunting load. While loosing a core is never optimum, it went through a whole lotta elk before it quit.

Load is 46.5 H4350 for 2,700. Another equally good load is 41.5 - 42.0 of Varget.

I WISH my rifle would group the 150 Partition... I'd look no further. The Partition is my favorite bullet, followed by the AccuBond (though I call them Non-Accu-Bond's as they generally don't shoot as well as Partitions or Ballistic Tips IME).

This rifle, thus far, has steadfastly refused to group FB bullets.

I just wish Nosler made a 150 7mm AccuBond. The 150 NLRAB isn't my cup of tea. Noticed tip deformation during seating, and I just don't think its as stout as the Partition or AccuBond. The Ballistic Tip shoots as well as the NLRAB and is easier to deal with.

The 150 NBT's performance is exactly what I've come to expect. Not "optimum" (internet) penetration, but good enough and always accompanied by terrific internal damage. NBT's almost never hold their cores IME. Not a big deal, I'm not interested in taking promo photos. I just want to kill what I point at and the NBT's have worked for me since I started using them in the 1980's. A truly terrific, and underrated BG bullet IMO.

 

[DrMike]

I just wish Nosler made a 150 7mm AccuBond. The 150 NLRAB isn't my cup of tea. Noticed tip deformation during seating, and I just don't think its as stout as the Partition or AccuBond.

The 150 grain ABLR worked pretty well for me last year: http://forum.nosler.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28931&p=301774&hilit=+150+ABLR#p301774. No complaints.

 

[Dwh7271]

Brad and Goosehunter;
NIcely done. NIce bulls.

 

[RogueRiver]

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos ... e=54E605E5 My 2014 Blacktail, 3x3 w/ eye guards. 35 Whelen w 200 grn Rn reloads

 

[DrMike]

A very respectable blacktail, RR. Congratulations! He is a dandy. Difficult hunt?

 

[longrangehunter]

I don't know about you guys, but for myself, my Dog, in this case Zuri has once again pointed out there's somethings over there you need to see!

Mind you as much as I look outside and see Game, she sees just as many. This morning while looking out the window of what most would say, is that a Hayloft for a picture window? Yes it is and now it's my living room window and she saw something I should come look at?

Low and behold it was a beautiful Coyote standing between a group of trees in my front yard! I told her to stay and hush up! I ran downstairs to the reloading room to grab....... well lets see? The Kimber Montana 6.5/300 WSM was just prepped for shooting deer since I took it out the night before, and hey......... it's already loaded. I reached for the Harris bipod and peeked outside very slowly to look around the door jam. The Coyote had moved, oh there he is to the right looking back my way, and walked forward towards the creek bed and to the right even more.

I moved to the bench next to the front door as a shooting rest for some height as he dropped out of sight. Waiting but thinking I need to do something, I put down the shooting pad to rest my knees on off the cold concrete floor, it was 22 degrees and I was getting cold real quick! Something needs to happen real fast.

I went back in the house to grab my down jacket and the electric caller and rushed back outside. Quickly setting up the speaker to face towards the back of the house and moved back to my FFP, the front porch bench. I turned on the remote caller and...... nothing? It's was on, but wouldn't play! I went back to check the caller, it was on but nothing? I went back to test the remote again and after hitting the mute button on/off a few times I finally heard the damn thing come on.

I kept the volume low as to have that Coyote think a female was behind my house up the hill? But no sign yet..... so after a pause I switched to a female coyote challenge and made a few series of yips and sure enough I saw a head bobbing up and down coming my way through the tail grass........ I paused the caller to see if he'd come in since I figured he's hung up out there somewhere? And that did it, he came back around the same way he came into that woods and that's all I needed to have and waited for him to stop and look........ your dead!

I saw him drop to the ground through the scope as the gun went off, he was 3/4 turned facing me. I aimed to just left of his facing shoulder for a complete pass through..... one 140 gr. SGK is all it took! At 3.5x the M3 Leupold had also done a great job for pinpoint accuracy and field of view...... at a little over a hundred yards away it's rare to get multiple shots at these Dogs where I live. Heavy timber is in every direction less then a 50 yards away and in most places less then that.

A nice beautiful male Coyote, not very old, his teeth were still very pointy and sharp. Zuri looked him over to make sure he was dead? Not really, she's only this year started to get the real drift of what I do with a rifle. Now that she's seen me take down an Elk she really started to hunt on her own through the woods these past few weeks.

Zuri is actually a therapy Dog I own for Lori that recently lost 85-90% of her sight. She's a beautiful 3 1/2 old English Labrador. Not all Labs hunt, some are born better hunters then some others or become used to perform different tasks. My last Labrador was of all things a Big Game hunting Dog. Ya she was very good at hunting upland birds or rabbit but the chase of a Bear was more her thing. She was a different breed of animal then most labs I think only because of all the exposure to Big Game hunting.

Zuri I think now understands the drill. She knows to sit and watch for pray when we're out looking over the food plots, and sure enough she came through this morning at 7:15 AM when see saw that Coyote. So for today I'd like to thank her for the help in taking the Coyote, had it not been for her I might not have even seen him?

Without further ado here's the Dog that had his last meal around my place and the one that'll help you spot them!

 

[DrMike]

Good job, Zuri; and good job, Kevin. You did very well, indeed. I truly enjoyed sharing the hunt.

 

[cloverleaf]

Everyone- those are some great pics and wonderful hunting tales thanks for posting! Nice Elk (s), Holy smokes look at them mulies!

Guy- till like that goat. That is some of my favorite country. Did most of my Antelope hunting in SD just over the Montana line north of the Wyoming border- north end of the Black hills and north toward the ND line. No wonder you went back. Pretty country! But then I am biased.... CL

 

[Palouser]

Looks good guys! Nice bull... Dang...

The good ol' .25-06 and Nosler 115 Ballistic Tips did good again for me in Wyoming this year. Pronghorn photos are being stubborn about coming out of the camera. I'll do what I can... Mulie though, looks pretty good. Wide 3x4 plus some little stuff on his rack. Older buck, big body. Am happy and back home now.





Regards, Guy

Nice looking buck and goat Guy!

 

[Guy Miner]

Thanks. I'm super happy with them both.

Already enjoyed the steaks for dinner, looking forward to seeing the antlers on the wall.

Guy

 

[Palouser]

Pretty successful season so far. A small little freezer whitetail, spike elk and took a good friend out for a nice mule deer. The whitetail and elk were both shot with my Model 70 Supergrade, .270 Win. Hand loads with 130 Grain Nosler ballistic tips, 61 grains of H4831SC, CCI BR2 primers and Nosler brass. The whitetail was going Mach 4 at a 90 degree angle at about 70 yds and my shot was behind the diagram. It went about 100 yards and laid down and I was able to put another one in him. Pretty impressive performance for an unimpressive shot! The elk was spine shot at 125 yards or so after a rump shot from my partner's 7mm Rem Mag. The Mule deer was shot quartering toward us in the front shoulder with 140 grain Accubonds out of a 270 Win. It went about 20 feet and tipped over. All three shots were pass through with the exception of the rump shot.

My new favorite recipe is the blackstrap cut into a rib roast, rubbed with Montreal Steak seasoning and then put on the Traeger for about 40 minutes on high and served with Au Jus! Almost as good as beef prime rib, but not quite.

 

[DrMike]

A very successful season, Palouser. Yes, that is for sure the way to prepare the back strap. Congratulations on a very successful season. You did well.

 

[Palouser]

A very successful season, Palouser. Yes, that is for sure the way to prepare the back strap. Congratulations on a very successful season. You did well.

Thanks Doc!

 

[salmonchaser]

Nice work.

 

[Oldtrader3]

Ah! Mule deer are my favorite game as well. Nothing makes my blood pump better than a mature muley, stotting his way across a canyon in the mountains!